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Undeniably Yours by Shannon Stacey

Undeniably Yours is the second book in the Kowalski series, this time centering on the romance of another Kowalski brother – Kevin. This is the brother who was introduced in the first book – the ex-cop, divorced bachelor who runs a bar. Although characters from the first book appear in this one, you do not need to read the series in order. (If you’re interested in the first book, Exclusively Yours, I reviewed it here:)

Bar owner Kevin Kowalski is used to women throwing their phone numbers at him, but lately he’s more interested in finding a woman to settle down with. A woman like Beth Hansen. If only their first meeting hadn’t gone so badly…

Beth’s tending bar at a wedding when she comes face to face with a tuxedo-clad man she never thought she’d see again. She tries to keep her distance from Kevin but, by last call, she can’t say no to his too-blue eyes or the invitation back to his room. Then she slips out before breakfast without leaving a note and, despite their precautions, pregnant.

Kevin quickly warms to the idea of being a dad and to seeing where things go with Beth. After all, he’s not the player she thinks he is. But she’s not ready for a relationship and, given his reputation, it’s going to take a lot to convince her to go on a second date with the father of her child…”

My Thoughts: Beth Hansen is a nomad. She finds a place on the map that appeals to her and she moves there when things at her current town get too stifling: “when I reach the point in relationships people start keeping tabs on me and making decisions for me, I get on a bus to someplace new.” She is fiercely protective of her independence to the point of blind stubbornness. When she gets pregnant (even with a condom) from a one night stand with Kevin Kowalski, she is not thrilled that it means a permanent tie to someone she considers a womanizer.

Kevin may have had a lot of women throw themselves at him at the bar, but he’s ready to settle down, and he wants a real relationship with Beth. The problem is that after their night together, Beth constantly resists anything that feels like a relationship. For the baby, she has to accept Kevin’s offer to move her from a unsafe apartment to an apartment across the hall from his above the bar, but Kevin has to choose his words carefully to get her to agree to anything beyond that. She thinks a serious relationship would be too much on top of being pregnant, especially since, if it ends badly, it would affect their child.

Undeniably Yours is about Kevin and Beth slowly getting to know each other after they’ve already gotten pregnant. Kevin has to slowly break down Beth’s defenses and convince her to consider being with him. In the meantime, there are plenty of loud Kowalski get-togethers and family moments. I’ve decided that the wry, sometimes frank humor from a lot of tell-it-like-it-is characters is what I like the most about this series. I feel like I’m guaranteed a general feeling of amusement from reading these books. Some of the commentary can get a bit.. salty, but this is an adult book, so whatever (there’s sex too, FYI).

I think that this book makes a good go of trying to convince me that Beth has reasonable fears, but I never quite understood her need to not be tied down by relationships with other people. The reason given was that her parents were overly-suffocating when she was growing up, but to make a person never want to stay in one town and never want to have people keeping “tabs” on her? I didn’t quite understand it. That seemed extreme. Later, when she admits to herself that the real issue is “not only imagining herself in one place with one person, but wondering for the rest of her life, especially during the rough patches, if they were just pretending for the sake of the child”, that admission comes too late – I’m already convinced that Beth has weird intimacy issues. It didn’t help that while Beth herself is the big hurdle to her own HEA, Kevin is pretty much a saint. If I can pick on a trend in this series so far, it is that while the women have to work through some issue, the heroes in these books are almost too perfect in comparison. I mean, this guy waits all through the pregnancy, not caring about the women that are slipping him their numbers, for someone who shuts him out constantly and tells him that all they are are friends who happen to share a baby? Makes me feel like it’s a struggle between feeling slightly irritated at Beth or irritated at what a martyr Kevin is. Of course, with these surprise pregnancy romances, there’s only so many ways the story can go. If Beth wasn’t resistant, then this would be a very short story. I just wish we could have had the “do you want to be with me for obligation?” issue as Beth’s primary issue instead of her improbable nomad complex.

Like it’s predecessor, Exclusively Yours, Undeniably Yours has a secondary story. In this case it is a romance between Paulie, who works at Kevin’s bar, and Sam Logan, a customer and someone from Paulie’s past. As with Kevin and Beth, the hurdle in their romance is on the female’s side again – Paulie freaked out on her way down the aisle because she felt like she was conforming to her parents expectations and not being herself. The improbability in this one was that Paulie loved Sam yet never confided her fears to him, but this was easier to believe than the hurdle in the main romance. It was a fine secondary story but I enjoyed Paulie’s friendship with Beth and with Kevin more than her romance, which I felt competed with the main one. I would have been fine without it or with it in its own separate book.

Overall: Enjoyable in a “escapist popcorn read” kinda way. The writing is compulsively readable, and the relationships between characters, especially the dynamics of big family, felt very comforting to read about. That, the humor, and of course the guarantee of a HEA make this a fun contemporary romance. My only issue, and I feel like a dog with a bone over it, is the heroine’s intimacy issues (I keep revisiting it and it just doesn’t make sense). I can see that being a big sticking point for a lot of people, but if you enjoyed any other of the Kowalski books, this is still worth a read – ultimately I feel like this book lost points from me over it, but not a whole lot.

Steph Su wrote a review of the first one (on goodreads) that gives a different opinion so you may want to check that out too. I have heard that this one is most people’s least favorite and the third one is the favorite, and the first one falls in the middle. I shall see.